LawCulture

Justice on Television

So there is a new television show on Fox that begins tonight called "Justice."  Looking briefly at the description of the first episode, it looks like the show will be like all the other ones -- more about the lawyers than litigation, more about celebrity than advocacy, more about truth than fair process.  Given the extent to which this blog has already discussed television legal drama already, I won't belabor the point here, but I do wonder what it is the television producers think has not yet been covered by yet another law show that perverts the perception of the practice of law?  I'll be eager to hear what people have to say about this new show.

False Confessions & the DA

Boulder County Colorado district attorney Mary T. Lacey yesterday asked that the arrest warrant against John M. Karr in the Jon Benet Ramsey case be dismissed. “No evidence has developed, other than his own repeated admissions, to place Mr. Carr at the scene of the crime,” Lacey stated. “Mr. Karr was not the source of the DNA found on the underwear of JonBenet Ramsey.”

What may be most remarkable about this latest twist in the long-festering case is the district attorney’s forthrightness and honesty in dismissing Karr’s multiple confessions to the crime. Too often, confession is considered the “queen of proofs,” evidence that closes the case. It’s impossible to estimate how many of those convicted and incarcerated on the basis of confession alone may be innocent—but surely some are, such as the Washington pig farmer Paul Ingram accused by his daughters of the most bizarre crimes—none of which was ever supported by a shred of material evidence—whose case was detailed in Lawrence Wright’s Remembering Satan. Psychologist Richard Ofshe, who has done much probative work on false confessions, quickly established that one could inculcate nearly any false memory one chose in this particularly suggestible suspect. And there are many others who bizarrely convince themselves that they were implicated in crimes they had nothing to do with.

It’s enough to give credence to Sigmund Freud’s apparently bizarre note on criminology called “Criminals From a Sense of Guilt,” where he argues that the reason people commit crimes is that they feel guilty, and want to ensure that they will be punished. This effectively turns the whole criminal justice system on its head.

The Boulder district attorney has taken much flak in this case, but I'd point out that she had the good sense to understand that confessions need some kind of confirmation (in German procedure, a court is not supposed to accept a suspect’s confession unless corroborated by other evidence). Alas, that’s not the standard operating procedure in the U.S.. In most instances, once the police interrogators have got a confession, the suspect is doomed. Not only does this lead to false convictions, it lets the truly guilty escape. Getting confessions comes to appear the easy way to do police work, and that can lead to less than probative results. Confessions should be used to open cases, not to close them.

Peter Brooks

SALT's Power

SALT's bi-annual teaching conference will be held this year at my home institution. We are looking forward to hosting the conference devoted to "Academic Freedom and Teaching Activism in the Post 9/11 World."  Although I am not doing the planning for the conference, its occasion has got me thinking about the acronym (SALT) for the organization (the Society of American Law Teachers) and about acronyms more generally. There is an article, I think, all about legal acronyms. I can't remember whether it's humorous or serious (quick -- anyone find that article?), but the more I think about SALT and the possible connotations the word raises with an activist organization of the kind SALT is, my mind wanders to others: TRIPS, NOAA, ACORDS, ORCAA, PACER, PERC, WIPO.  These days, we are likely jaded by the speed at which acronyms are adopted into our everyday lexicon. Stepping back to think about their value -- informative, humorous, efficient -- makes me think of some of their other effects and qualities -- obfuscating, braggy, hurried. These days, do the creation of acronyms drive the naming of organizations and groups? Is the value of the acronym (the mark?) that obvious to people?  I would love, for example, to learn more about the SALT acronym and its deliberate or coincidental adoption by the Society.  In any case, I hope to see people at the conference next week.

Call for Papers: Food, Law and Culture

Chris Buccafusco, a graduate student in the History of Culture program at the University of Chicago, is putting together a panel at the Annual Law, Culture and Humanities conference (to be held in March 2007 at Georgetown Law Center).  His call for papers is here on August 1, 2007 and reproduced below. I would recommend his blog for "gustatory fun" as well. (Anyone who thought writing about law and film was a way out of the legal academic doldrums, consider writing about the regulation of wine classification and recipe copyrightability).

Call for Papers: Food, Law, and Culture Panel

I am currently soliciting paper presentations for a new panel on “Food, Law, and Culture” for the annual Law, Culture, and Humanities Conference to be held at Georgetown University, March 23-24 2007.

Last year’s conference included a handful of “Law and Food” papers in different panels. They were all well-received, and the topics they addressed seem worthy of integration into a single panel. The panel’s goal will be to begin theorizing about the place(s) of food in the law by exploring both the different ways law treats food and the various cultural norms about food that lie behind this treatment. My work, for example, analyzes the copyrightability of recipes through the lenses of aesthetic philosophy and the cultural history of cooks and cooking.

Topics can include, but are not limited to:

Intellectual property rights in genetically modified foods
Hunger strikes and force-feeding prisoners
Last meals
Food torts, e.g. exploding sodas, fingers in chili, coffee in the lap
Government regulation of food and alcohol
Obesity regulation
Animal rights
Dietary laws and regulations in different cultures
Trademark rights in appellations of origin
Farm subsidies and international trade
Linguistic classification of food, e.g. kosher, 1st Growths, Organic
Sumptuary laws
Famine
Labeling, packaging, and branding
Rationing
Food stamps

The deadline for submissions to the conference is October 15, 2006, so please respond well before then if you think you might be interested in joining the panel. Also, please circulate this to any colleagues that might be interested. Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions or comments.

BIg-Box Rules

In response to my article in the Boston Globe on the proposed Chicago ordinance requiring big-box retailers to pay employees a living wage, blogger Daniel Drezner goes the ad hominem root and suggests that, before stating an opinion on the matter, I need to live on the south side of Chicago where the store would be going.  If I did, he says, then I'd see that the proposed Chicago ordinance is reckless.  But, of course, lots of people who have spent lots of time there -- and in places a lot like it -- seem to think the ordinance is sorely needed.  They realize that big-box retailers want access to lots of neighborhoods in the city, and not just the one Drezner highlights.  In fact, big-box is already in some upscale parts of Chicago.  So we know this much: people who know the neighborhood and the city in question quite well (and that includes Drezner) actually have VERY different views on the wisdom of this policy.   Which leads precisely to the point I was making.  I was not arguing that Chicago should pass the ordinance but rather that Chicago should have the legal power to make the policy judgment for itself.  Drezner, an economist, skipped right over that distinction. (If I need a fellowship to take me to the South Side, as he suggests, then maybe he needs one to take him to law school.)  Actually,  though, Drezner is on to something interesting and important.  He emphasizes rightly that not all city neighborhoods are the same. It might be that the city would be wise to permit bix box retail in some neighborhoods within the city on more favorable terms than others.  The mayor has suggested as much, proposing that each ward be able to decide the matter for itself.   It's a complex policy question, however, whether such neighborhood-based tailoring is a good idea or a bad one, and it depends a lot on the particularities of the retail market in the Chicago area.  I am skeptical it is a good idea, but open to being persuaded otherwise.  But, for me, the key point for now is that a city could not tailor its policy in this neighborhood-focused manner even it was a good idea for it to do so unless it had the legal power to enact such living wage ordinances at all.  And that's part of the reason why I think the Chicago ordinance, if enacted,  should be upheld against the home rule, equal protection,  and ERISA-preemption challenges that are sure to follow.

Gardening and Lawyering

I'm preoccupied with the city of Boston, these days, perhaps because I have looming deadlines that I am avoiding, perhaps because classes begin in three weeks and I am looking for a distraction. In any case, as I was walking to work this morning through the Boston Public Garden, I was struck by the sight of palm trees. It seems that the glorious gardners of our public spaces made the most of our gruesome heatwave.  Newly planted among rows of other tropical plants, the miniature palm trees greet you as you walk around the equestrian statue of George Washington. Tickled at the sight of the magnificent General on his horse surrounded by the palm trees, I thought this non sequitur was both humorous and inspiring. It recasts our national hero in new clothes, reminding me that even our founders have to change with the times.  And it helped me recognize how crucial invention and creativity is in our daily lives, in gardening, in parenting, in politics, in law.  (For those of you not familiar with the Boston Public Garden, it is usually planted more traditionally and with local or native flowers, trees and shrubs, perhaps in keeping with the historic nature of the place, perhaps as a sign of the conventional dimension of Boston culture.)  The palm trees also made me laugh and, I thought, were meant to be lighthearted, both crucial demeanors these days (at least for me) in times of war. I am not suggesting that we take the current politics of our times -- our duties as citizens or advocates or teachers -- less seriously. I am suggesting that the need for change is strong; we might draw on our inventive capacities to imagine and make our communities better; good ideas might come from unexpected places (palm trees in the Common, flanking Washington); and keeping a sense of humor is critical to letting those good ideas flow.

Big Dig Turmoil

As if things around Boston aren't hot enough, state legislatures are actually considering taxing non-Bostonians who tie up traffic by causing accidents during rush hour. The Boston Globe reported today that elected officials are actually considering assessing a surcharge "of several hundred dollars" on any out-of-town automobile commuter whose at-fault accident frustrates what should be a well-oiled commute into downtown Boston. The article reports that with "Boston property taxes up 58 percent since 2002 and the city's cost of doing business rising, the proposal is finding support from people who say money should be raised from those who use city services [tow trucks, ambulances, etc.] but don't pay for them."

With our out-of-town Governor unclear on the concept of avoiding racist speech when talking about one of the costliest (and now fatal) public works projects this nation has ever seen (see coverage yesterday on Mitt Romney's use of the term "tar baby" to describe the Big Dig), Massachusetts doesn't need any more controversy to stir up and divide its citizens. How would a proposal like this work anyway? A Boston-based ambulance arrives at the scene of an accident in one of our newly-built but leaky and collapsing tunnels, and the Boston ambulance driver says to the out-of-towner with a sprained ankle and whiplash: "for the price of driving on our roads and because you have caused a traffic snarl and are not from around here, your ride will cost $300 more than a native Bostonian." How could the out-of-towner respond? "Well, I used be from around here. In fact, I lived in Boston for 12 years while you were building this mess. I suffered through the detours and closed roads and only moved away a couple of years ago, and I did that because the schools were only getting worse and my kid was about to start kindergarten."

It seems to me there are a lot of good reasons (finances aside) not to enact a law like this one. The common demoninator in our public life (and public laws) may seem like money, but it is really community. This proposal may raise money, but it will divide and alienate people. It raises the NIMBY syndrome to new levels. It is a bad idea.